Don’t let others dictate your truth.

Absorb, acknowledge, and observe all opinions, ideas, thoughts, and rhetoric, to their fullest degree. Then cast your own aside, and view them as heresy. Because in the end, you must shape your own belief.

Don’t let others dictate your truth.

These ideals may seem naïve, arrogant, or short-sighted, but they are what I’ve learned since one fateful night in 2006.

Foresight

There is something to be said about prescience, intuition, and the ability to recognize greatness before others, in the moment. When true growth and learning is being achieved, that pattern will begin to emerge. You will begin to sense and understand things as they happen and before they happen, while others are still processing their effects.

For cinema, the movies of Stanley Kubrick gave me my first education on film and it’s potential. The greatest director’s director, Kubrick is perhaps the most prime example of recognizing greatness in the moment. In certain moments, it’s unmistakable. But to view such giants with your feet planted on the ground is arduous. And so the movies of Ang Lee allowed me to know what’s possible, what’s tangible, and to dream of that possibility through another lens. To see a Taiwanese director embark on his career in his 40’s and reach such heights, it was like witnessing greatness as it was happening.

But on March 5th, 2006 at the 78th Academy Awards, my cinematic world was upended. In a last minute upset, Brokeback Mountain lost to Crash for Best Picture, despite winning for Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Music. For a 17-year old Taiwanese-American film fanatic and Ang Lee devotee, it was like being told Santa doesn’t exist.

Much of my brooding was directed at the fact that Crash was just a bad movie with a teaspoon-deep message about racism. Another white-savior in disguise, Matt Dillon heroically overcomes his racist cop character arc because he saves a black woman at the end of the film. Wow, he must have really learned his lesson! Truly Paul Haggis at his worst. That was an instantaneous moment of recognizing not greatness, but garbage in the moment. To add insult to injury, I remember just HOW many people thought Crash was a good, even great film. Countless people. Big critics, nameless critics, producers, friends. I remember the names. And we’re still playing massive catch-up in 2021.

So how is it, that hundreds, sometimes thousands of talented, top-of-their-class, hard-working individuals have such choice opinions in the moment? A complete and utter lack of foresight.

Don’t let others dictate your truth.

The Awards

JUMP CUT TO:

The Year 2021. The 93rd Academy Awards. Everyone and their Vietnamese pot belly pig is now hella woke in Hollywood. People of color, transgender folks, ASL folks, disabled folks, all ya’ll getting recognized. This is, The Year of Marginalized Voices.

The Best Picture candidates were a huge step up from previous years. No more run-of-the-mill generics like Bohemian Rhapsody or Green Book getting overly saturated nominations, instead you saw nuanced and difficult films being nominated: Sound of Metal, Judas and the Black Messiah, The Father.

For Best Actor and Best Actress, you have one of the most stacked sets of nominees on both sides. There is no doubt that Frances McDormand became Fern, and encapsulated that feeling of being displaced and isolated, like so many are in America. But I also feel like it’s something we’ve seen before from Frances, I’m not sure I saw anything completely new from her in this film, but she was excellent in what she did and what she needed to do.

Sir Anthony Hopkins is one of Earth’s greatest living actors and so it was never an easy decision between him and Chadwick Boseman. Certainly his performance in The Father warranted the recognition. But I think there was just so much momentum for Chadwick leading up to the Oscars, that it was hard to picture anything else but a beautiful, posthumous win for him. An endearing crown, fit for a King to end his legacy, and perhaps the only win we would truly receive from his early departure. I think Sir Anthony was correct in his own surprise that he had won, though his humility comes from his own understanding of the moment. You can see the respect and gratitude that he has for Chadwick, for he himself has seen nearly all of his contemporaries, his rivals, and his peers, pass on before him.

Original Screenplay and Adapted Screenplay felt like the biggest locks to me. A strong first-timer script with a unique voice and direction, along with a meaty and introspective journey through the mind of a man at the end of his days. Those are just ripe for selection, and I think there’s too much improvisation and adlibbing from Nomadland to garner a writing win there.

For Cinematography, it’s probably more of a surprise to see Nomadland not win for Best Cinematography than it is seeing Mank win for Best Cinematography, because Mank is such an exquisitely shot and lit film. The light and shadows in Mank ooze from all corners of the frame, a beautiful callback to the cinematography and texture of the 1940’s. But I do think Nomadland in many ways was carried by the tone and beauty of the cinematography, and if Nomadland was the film that touched or resonated with people the most, then perhaps that should have carried more weight from the DPs and technical artists that voted on Best Cinematography. But it’s usually a more technical or proficiency vote given from this category anyway.

Easily the greatest speech of the night, and the 2nd best moment of the night next to Glenn Close’s bubble butt, Yuh-Jung Youn’s acceptance speech was everything we had hoped for and more. Leading up to the Oscars, Yuh-Jung’s previous acceptance speeches at SGA and BAFTA, were already trending for their hilarity and honesty. She is the embodiment of your firecracker Asian Grandma; Korean, Chinese, or Japanese. But her grasp of English and foreign concepts is beyond worldly. Having her riff on live television in front of millions, about not wanting to be in competition with people like Glenn Close because she’s been watching her films for decades, to her surmising that maybe she was just a bit “luckier” than everyone, to her noting that perhaps to some small degree, American voters wanted to go out of their way to acknowledge an Asian actor, shows that she’s as wise as she is wily at 73 years young. What a deserved win.

The recognition and overall reception towards Minari has been pretty powerful. I think people have really taken to the film and are seeing how Asian-American stories are vastly untold, but beautifully unique and universal as well. These efforts will undoubtedly pave the way for more stories and more storytellers to make their mark.

The true jewel of the night though, was Chloé Zhao. With The Rider and with Nomadland, you can recognize some of that greatness in the moment. You can feel what she feels. There is a lightness, almost like a calm breeze that sweeps through you and carries you gently through her films. There is an Eastern-influence, an Asian-influence that you can feel in the quiet moments of her films. An honesty and lack of judgment in the way she views things. It reminds me so much of Ang Lee, and of Brokeback Mountain.

Her speech was very much the way she carries herself. With grace and with compassion. She exudes an overwhelming sense of Good. Her inclusion of traditions, her childhood, and her father’s teachings are all the markings of a young Chinese girl. And the last time we heard Mandarin spoken on stage at the Oscars was when Ang Lee won for Life of Pi.

To have another Asian director win Best Director, following the great Bong-Joon Ho’s emphatic win for Parasite the year before, the world is showing you that change is coming. We are being given the foresight into how the voices of cinema, movies, and television will change in the coming years.

The great teachers always stay with us.

And while television might be a means of entertainment and escapism more than anything else, Jeopardy always strived to be more than that. To be precise. To be excellent.

Alex Trebek was a professional’s professional, and there was no arena better suited for his acute austerity and accuracy, than a televised trivia show that tests an individual’s mental acuity and breadth of knowledge in rapid fire succession. Like a real-life Google or Ask Jeeves, Trebek seemed to carry an endless world of facts, dates, knowledge, and history, behind the cards.

But he wasn’t just a purveyor of information, Trebek cared about accuracy and form. To properly answer the question in the form of a question. And while Trebek’s serious nature could at times be perceived as surly or highbrow, there was always a playfulness. A brevity of wit that he so easily possessed, that put both audience and contestants at ease, and allowed Jeopardy to be fast, fun, and furious. Not facetious. He made it cool to not only be smarter, but to try.

There was not a single moment in my life where I would skip past Jeopardy if it was airing. It felt a bit like cinema for me, like church. Where your ultimate involvement is to be at the mercy of something greater than yourself. Where you may fail often, but in doing so, you’ll find ways of finding your own success.

Trebek’s greatest wisdom was that he knew Jeopardy was greater than the sum of it’s parts, more than just a television show. That drive is what brought him to his final day of filming on-set, a mere 10 days before he passed. He was a teacher for millions of Americans, every night at 7PM, and he knew that. And we are all better for it.

Going to the movie theater is a bit like watching a train go by.

It’s approach is far off. Almost insignificant. It’s like a little speck off in the distance. A text message, “Want to see The Departed on Friday?” You don’t think too much of it at the time, though you know it’s coming.

But suddenly Friday night rolls around, and the parking lot is fucking packed. “I’m on the 6th floor of the garage, stuck between an oversized Tahoe and a big pole, I think next to the Crate & Barrel. Where you at?”

You, my friend, are standing in line of course! In concessions. You’ve spent the last 20 minutes of your extremely significant existence contemplating between a Coke Icee or Blue Raspberry Icee, only to realize in your temporal stupor, that the obvious choice is clearly a 50/50 combination of both. “That’ll be $39.42. Do you have a Regal card?”

But the magic of seeing a movie shouldn’t be lost in the 5-6 potentially problematic steps that it takes to get there. The magic of going to see a movie is when 500 fully-grown, and not-so-grown, human beings of all interests, denominations, beliefs, and creeds, can shut the fuck up for 120 minutes and find something bigger than themselves to relate to.

Going to the movie theater is a bit like going to church. You sit in silence. To absorb. To listen. And if the sermon is any good, you will be humbled. I realize now that I go to the movies because I want to be humbled.

And that’s one of the greatest lessons I’ve learned from this pandemic. There’s still nothing like going to see a movie in the theaters. Like going to a concert or a live show, it’s collective effect and hold on us on as a species, on a primal level, is unmatched.

Because while there are still great movies and shows releasing to streaming platforms amidst the theater lockdown, none of them have ascended to the levels of great theatrical films PRE-COVID.

Imagine a film like Parasite debuting on Amazon Prime right now.

It would still breakthrough, surprise audiences, and be the great film that it is, but it would inevitably get a bit lost. Diluted by the mass of information, the mass of content out there. And it would only be partially as potent when you have the ability to pause at any given time to your convenience.

When you’re in a movie theater, the film moves you, not the other way around.

And so when the train finally arrives, and it is thundering along next to you, shaking the ground from 5 feet away, there’s really not much to do but to stand and stare, or to look away. To be humbled.

From a thousand miles away, there was a warmth and humanity that emanated from him. It was palpable. It could be felt by millions.

A champion for his ancestors, he was the driving force behind using Xhosi, the South African language featured heavily in Black Panther, and advocated for T’Challa to speak with an African accent. To represent an African king to black audiences, using a dialect unchanged by the West.

Early on in his career he won a role on All My Children, but voiced his criticism against his character’s stereotyping and clichés. He felt that he could elevate the role, and turn something potentially harmful into something positive. He was fired from the show before he ever aired. But in doing so, it eventually led to a young Michael B. Jordan landing the role, with a script ultimately altered and less embellished, thanks to Boseman’s original efforts.

Black boys and black girls have lost their Superhero, at a time when they need him the most. But he was the closest thing to a real-life Superhero that you could get. An actor whose heart spoke through his work. A true artist.

9 years ago, in the Summer of 2011, I made this spec commercial.

I don’t know why. I’ve never been a Lakers fan, and I was never an outright Kobe fan. But his greatness was always inspiring.

And so I turned to a piece of music from The Fountain, composed by Clint Mansell. A film that follows a man to the depths of the earth, and to the ends of the universe, on a relentless quest to save the one he loves from her mortal fate. An impossible goal, met with an unstoppable resolve. Fitting for the Mamba.

I recorded the voice-over at Everett Orian’s home studio, trying to emulate and channel Michael in his legendary “Failure” commercial. It’s funny, but in tribute to Kobe, we all end up trying to be like Mike.

Mamba Forever 🐍♾🏀🙏

www.vimeo.com/davidleefilms/theroad

I’ve always hated talking about politics, but never about race.

But talking about race isn’t politics. It’s about identity.

Imagine you walk into a grocery store and 20 pairs of eyes lock onto you. Glaring at you with distrust, assumptions, contempt. Many think less of you. Many think they’re better than you.

If you’re white and living in America, you probably haven’t had this privilege. If you’re black or a person of color, you’ve lived this.

In high school, as a sophomore in the predominantly white, upper-class confines of Lake Oswego, I was confronted by my history teacher for saying what he said “was racist”. He remarked to a white student in the class, who on Cinco De Mayo was wearing a Chevy’s Sombrero while addressing the morning announcements, saying “See ya’ later El Mick-o!” to said student on our way out.

I responded “that’s racist” like I had sneezed, out of instinct. There was honestly no way I could control it. We had a couple Mexican students in the class, both of whom were very shy, very quiet, and I don’t think they would have stood up for themselves against a highly ‘educated’ and respected history teacher. And nor should they have to. If I was Mexican, my blood would have been boiling.

And just as fast as I said it, if not faster, I hear “David, come see me after class”. My friends in the class gave me a real wide side-eye look and gestured that they’d wait for me outside.

I’ll never forget his bottom lip quivering, inches away from my face. Nearly spitting on me. He was pissed that I questioned him in his own classroom. “How dare you call me a racist in my own classroom” were his exact words. My retort were these exact words: “I didn’t call you a racist, I said what you said was racist. There’s a difference.” I spammed that line 2 or 3 times, all while his mouth and jaw shook with contempt. Looking back on it, I was honestly somewhat scared at the time that he would act out. If that were to happen to me now, it would feel like nothing. It would be like water off my back, and I would hold my ground stronger than I had before.

That was my first true experience with “white fragility”.

After a lengthy meeting with my family and the high school’s then vice principal, which I was not even aware of at the time when it occurred (shame on the adults for their diminutive attitude), that subsequent teacher treated me like I was Mother Theresa for the rest of the year, and has now been fired by said district for other charges related to a DUI.

“Everyone Has An Opinion: A Shitty Netflix Movie“

The world has always been full of noise. And the world is louder than ever.

The fact that every person has their own platform on Social Media, their own echo-chamber and soapbox, is both consciously destructive and empowering. And like a shitty or equally incredible movie on Netflix, they begin to reveal themselves quite quickly.

The amount of people who are now “critical thinkers”, who have shown themselves in nearly every previous opportunity, to be quite the opposite, is staggering. Many weren’t eloquent then, and much like racism, things don’t often change.

Now is the time to absorb, to read, to listen, from your Ivory Tower. If you’re not doing one of those things (let this be my ironic excuse), then you’re doing your fellow countrymen a disservice.

Some of our brothers can’t breathe.

That’s a bad shot. Unless you’re torching somebody. Unless you really can’t be stopped, and you’re 9 for 17 (52.9%) from beyond-the-arc, having already dropped 47 on the night.

That’s a bad shot. Unless you’re the best deep-distance threat in the playoffs this year, shooting 6 for 12 from 30+ feet (50%) going into game 5, and 10 for 18 (55%) after it.

That’s a bad shot, if you’re losing. If you’re down 1 or 2 points, or in this hypothetical scenario, if it’s 113 to 115 or 114 to 115, then an easy/high-percentage shot or drive to the rim for contact is favorable. But when the game is tied, what is the risk of missing that “bad shot” right there? In Dame’s mind, all that means is overtime, and another chance to put your team away. That’s not a bad shot if there’s no immediate risk of loss or repercussion. Dame isn’t scared to miss, and that’s why he can let it fly.

That’s a bad shot, because when you hang back that deep, you’re telegraphing to the defense what you’re doing. You’re telling them you’re gonna SHOOT that shot, try and stop me. Then why not collapse on that player? Smother him outside, and don’t worry about him blowing by you off-the-dribble to the lane. For all of Paul George’s tremendous talent and basketball IQ, does he really think that Dame’s not gonna shoot if he’s 30 feet away from the basket with 2 or 3 seconds left on the clock? He’s been doing that all game, and he’s been killing you.

Funnily enough, it shouldn’t surprise us that Paul George thought Dame’s hail-mary was a bad shot. It goes to show you the degree of judgment he’s working with. The fact that his own 3-point shooting was just as uninspiring, 31.9% (15 for 47 on the series) is not a coincidence. That he’ll never take that shot makes all the difference, and what separates great players from legends.